Scholarly record

ARE BIOPOLYMERS THE WEAPON AGAINST POLLUTION DUE TO DISPOSABLE PACKAGING? NEW BIOBASED EDIBLE MATERIALS FOR PACKAGING FOOD SUPPLEMENTS

Roxana Gheorghita Puscaselu, Gheorghe Gutt

Abstract

Nowadays, the food supplement industry has grown considerably, mainly due to the orientation of consumers towards more natural products. In Romania, the Institute of Food Bioresources notified over 900 food supplements in 2020 and over 1500 in 2019. Unfortunately, the use of these supplements, although healthy, is problematic due to environmental pollution. The packaging used, often disposable, is highly polluting, multilayer, difficult to sort and impossible to recycle. This paper presents a viable option for packaging food supplements: completely edible materials, obtained from biopolymers, with rosemary, thyme and oregano essential oils addition. Agar, sodium alginate, and glycerol were used to obtain the films. The essential oils were added in different volumes. The samples were tested in order to evaluate the physical and optical characteristics and to determine solubility. The solubility characteristics are important in this sense as these films are recommended as packaging for food supplements and can be consumed with them, by dissolving in liquids with a temperature of about 30 degrees. The addition of essential oil has improved the physical characteristics of the films. Thus, they presented a more pleasant smell, taste and color, improved transmittance, and reduced roughness. The films were also tested microbiologically, and no microorganisms such as bacteria, yeasts and molds developed on the samples. The addition of essential oil increased the values of the film transmittance (from 4.22% in the case of the control sample, to 15.98% in the case of the sample with 25 microliters of oregano essential oil). Similarly, the opacity values decreased with the addition of essential oils (from 28.254 to 17.24 for the sample with a lower volume of oregano essential oil in the composition). According to microstructure images and micro topographies, films with the addition of oregano essential oil are more homogeneous, more uniform and with lower roughness values. The results obtained indicate the possibility and benefits of using these films for packaging food supplements.

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DOI resolver: doi.org/10.5593/sgem2021/5.1/s21.077

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